How do you pronnounce Tarot?

nisaba said:

I thought its origin was the Italian word Tarocchi? Didn't the cards originate in Italy and move to France later? In the Italian word Tarocchi, the emphasis is on the second syllable.


<grin> As is pronunciation, a whole different thing.

Signed, Nisaba,
Grammar Nazi,
Pronunciation Nazi,
Vocabulary Nazi.

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But to run with tarocchi, it would have to be tarr-o (with the stressed o as in orange.) I don't think ANYONE says it that way.

I am a total pedant on all counts, but still....

ALSO - English speakers do not refer to the capital of France as Paree... Things do get pronounced differently in different languages.

gregory said:

ALSO - English speakers do not refer to the capital of France as Paree... Things do get pronounced differently in different languages.

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<glaring> More's a pity. And that German city. In its own language, four letters - Koln. We make it not only twice as many letters, but twice as many syllables, and sharing no resemblance to its name at all!

Surely, the population of a country or a city know how to pronounce their place-names. We should learn from the inhabitants, not impose our own garbage on them.

gregory said:

ALSO - English speakers do not refer to the capital of France as Paree... Things do get pronounced differently in different languages.

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Unless one is saying the theatrical "in Gay Paree", but you are right. The word in English came from the French, not the Italian- nor the German Tarroch. If so, we would be saying
Ta-rock. New Zealand has many transliterations of Maori into English, and the results are hilarious. The pronounciations are invariably wrong.
Te-Ka- whata should actually be pronounced TeaCOWpfata. Americans call a mountain here
wrap-a-ho like it is an Apache name....but it is rue- a- peh-who. Everyone still knows it is the Mountain. Pronounciation is specific to different dialects. I would love to hear a Welsh person say 'Tarot'
~Rosanne

nisaba said:

<glaring> More's a pity. And that German city. In its own language, four letters - Koln. We make it not only twice as many letters, but twice as many syllables, and sharing no resemblance to its name at all!

Surely, the population of a country or a city know how to pronounce their place-names. We should learn from the inhabitants, not impose our own garbage on them.

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Tell that to a French person speaking of London.... We ALL, all over the world, "impose our own garbage". Because we speak different languages. My favourites are in Belgium, where you have two languages (three if you count Dutch) each with their own names for the same places in their own country. Brugge/Bruges; Liege/Lidje/Luik; Gent/Gand; Ypres/Ieper....

Long live diversity !

Rosanne said:

Unless one is saying the theatrical "in Gay Paree", but you are right. The word in English came from the French, not the Italian- nor the German Tarroch. If so, we would be saying
Ta-rock. New Zealand has many transliterations of Maori into English, and the results are hilarious. The pronounciations are invariably wrong.
Te-Ka- whata should actually be pronounced TeaCOWpfata. Americans call a mountain here
wrap-a-ho like it is an Apache name....but it is rue- a- peh-who. Everyone still knows it is the Mountain. Pronounciation is specific to different dialects. I would love to hear a Welsh person say 'Tarot'
~Rosanne

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Yeees ... like when I said I was on my way to Whatakhane when someone in NZ asked about my next stop ... apparently I got that quiet wrong.

gregory said:

Tell that to a French person speaking of London....

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Anybody there who can pronounce Andalucía, München, Beijing, Chernivtsi AND Khouribga like the natives would? I am hardly up for one

ETA: not to mention Gloucestershire and Reims

trzes said:

? I am hardly up for one

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..and yet your name? Trees? Zees? Rumplestiltskin? Tea-Zed-eease? (Just having a laugh)

~ROW-zan as in Xanado.

Rosanne said:

..and yet your name? Trees? Zees? Rumplestiltskin? Tea-Zed-eease? (Just having a laugh)

~ROW-zan as in Xanado.

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My forum name is a good one indeed It's part of my (German) grandfather's Polish surname and the oral familiy history goes that he couldn't pronounce it correctly himself and therefore finally got rid of it. But in fact Polish pronounciation is fairly straight forward, once you know the rules (like r+z = sh).

To me being a German native speaker "tArrow" sounds quit silly I have to admit. But in general most attempts of non-natives to pronounce words like what they think they should sound like in the original language are not much better. Like Doreen Virtue talking about her first "tèhrOUUH". That was equally far from the French or German sound.

I'm originally from oklahoma so it rhymes with sparrow.

LRichard said:

Why not pronounce the t and make it rhyme with carrot? The silent t sounds affected and snobby, almost as bad as putting the accent on the last syllable. However, I usually make the t silent in order to be understood.

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I once listened to a podcast where the hostess pronounced it that way - "Tarrit." She said she had been reading Tarrit cards for nearly 30 years and loved the imagery of Tarrit. I couldn't stand it after about 5 minutes. It was unbearable.